Israel is winning

Over the last few weeks, the Iranian theocracy and its Hezbollah puppet gang have attempted to escalate and broaden the all-out war against Israel which Hamas launched almost a year ago.  This has, to put it mildly, turned out to be a mistake.

Israel pre-empted Hezbollah's planned attack with a series of brilliant and effective precision moves, notably the exploding-pager attack, culminating with the killing of Hassan Nasrallah, one of jihadism's
most important leaders.  These actions have turned the tide against Hezbollah, which was driven to destruction by its fealty to the Iranian theocracy.  Most of its leaders are now dead and hundreds (at least) of its "army" of would-be butchers and rapists maimed and out of action.  Israel is following up with ground action in Lebanon.  The US supports Israel's operations there -- despite some squid ink about "ultimately pivoting from military operations to a diplomatic pathway" suggesting that the old pre-October-7 thinking still lingers on in Washington.  The American people strongly favor Israel in its fight against jihadism -- something that US politicians obviously understand but need to take to heart even more.

Faced with the neutering of its proxies in Lebanon, this week the theocracy itself launched a large-scale ballistic-missile attack on Israel.  Unlike the April drone attack, this onslaught was "for real", a desperate attempt to reverse the tide of Israeli victories.  Nevertheless, the attack was a fiasco.  Israel shot down almost all the missiles, with help from the US as well as France and Jordan.  Israeli installations suffered some damage, but only one person (a Palestinian in the West Bank) was killed.  Israel is now contemplating how to respond, and has many options.  Its leaders have doubtless noted the effectiveness of Ukraine's long-range strikes on the Russian heartland, and are likely considering comparable targets in Iran.

Netanyahu has made it clear he understands that the theocracy is the oppressor and enemy of the Iranian people and nation.  He's unlikely to risk major civilian casualties there, knowing that after the theocracy is gone, Iran could well even become a valuable ally.

Appeasers and defeatists have long lectured us that jihadism cannot be crushed by force and that any military efforts, with their unavoidable civilian casualties, merely "create more terrorists".  By this argument, military force could not have eliminated the Nazi regime and ideology in Germany, or the military junta and its fanatics in Japan -- both far more powerful enemies in their prime than jihadism today.  It is truly incredible that serious people listen to such nonsense.

I have never been a fan of Netanyahu personally, but it's now clear that his bold and forceful handling of this war has been the correct course.  By pursuing military victory and ignoring US hand-wringing, he has exposed the failure of the old ways of thinking and shown that genuine victory is achievable.  And the Israeli people well remember the lessons of history.

Appeasers talk about "ending" wars, realists talk about winning them.